Church Analytics: Why Every Church Website Needs To Have Google Analytics

In this article:

• What is Google Analytics?
• Church Analytics are being utilized right now
• How many months of church analytics does the average church website have?
• Why every church website needs to be using Google Analytics (*or another comparable analytics tool)

What is Google Analytics Anyway?

Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google.  It is one of a varied list of web analytics tools available online that allows you to track online activity and performance statistics for visitors to your website.  Some of the other tools available which are either free or paid include Click Tracks (Lyris HQ), StatCounter, and Omniture.

Churches Analytics Are Being Utilized Right Now

Churches are using web analytics because they need to measure whether their websites are accomplishing the tasks that are being expected of them.  Measurement is key because without it, all you have to to make decisions on are a few users’ subjective opinions on what they personally believe makes sense to them.  Although a lot of churches have not seriously considered church analytics as an integral part of their online ministry, for those churches who have analytics installed for their church website, they should at the very least be keeping an eye on how many people are visiting their websites, where they are coming from, and what content visitors are viewing.

How Many Months of Church Analytics Does the Average Church Website Have?

The average website in our study has 6 months of church analytics data.  The top 25% of churches had over 2 years worth of analytics, Kaleo Church had a survey-high analytics count of 3.75 years.  The lowest 25% had 3 months or less of analytics, and the newest analytics user had one month.

Our analytics research seems to indicate that while some early adopters have been tracking within GA for quite some time, about half of all websites have been tracking for 6 months, or less.

Thus, if you have not started tracking yet, don’t feel too bad, because lots of other churches are just getting on board with measuring their impact online.  Speak to your IT/Web professional, and just get started!

Why Every Church Website Needs To Be Using Google Analytics (*or another comparable analytics tool)

Google Analytics is a robust tool, it answers a lot of questions about what is bringing people in and what people are accessing.  More interestingly, having Google Analytics or another analytics program set up prompts you to be able to ask more meaningful questions about how your current website has been designed and whether people are able to get to what they need to effectively.

Importantly, what were once conversations about how one person thought the homepage seemed to be a bad color, but another one thought it was fantastic now becomes a more intelligent conversation based on measured statistics and AB analysis that Google Analytics enables.  Having hard numbers on visitors, content accessed, and traffic sources, bounce rates, and other metrics allow you to make better decisions.

Google Analytics is a free world class product used by marketing and web analytics professionals worldwide.  100% of the churches that we have analytics data for are using Google Analytics over any other available tool.  These churches use Google Anayltics as their primary church analytics tool because it is easy to set up, it is easy to present, and it is free!